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Outside Voice: Help reveals treasures lost in a sea of hay

Strawberries found on defiant runners. (Dana Coffield, The Denver Post)

I finally ate something harvested from my garden this week: a lone strawberry, plucked from a plant buried deep in the grassy half-circle off the back deck.

Daunted by the idea of working solo to reclaim beds subsumed last summer by a de facto meadow, I've given in and hired a hand to help uproot the chest-high hay that's already in flower.

The going is slow, and the victories are slight. I am now hyperaware that the rogue elms have grown tall and stout at the edge of the patio, but happy that at least one chokecherry bush has sprouted from the seeds I lazily tossed after a particularly good jam-making session.

Though they masquerade as grass, fans of original orange daylilies, collected from my great-grandmother's house in South Dakota, have survived. I am hopeful that blue penstemon grown from seeds gathered near a long-ago-sold cabin will weather the disruption of having grass roots sifted from the soil nearby.

And the strawberries. Left untended too long, they sent runners out, legging toward better conditions. Some were trapped, but once freed from the shade, they made good on their promise, delivering a tiny bite of the flavor of summer.

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